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Yahoo Reinvents Mobile Browser with Axis

2012-05-24T01:26:27Z

Yahoo has taken the mobile browser and improved it dramatically by integrating search and allowing users to view results rapidly without the need to open page after page. While Google allows similar functionality on a desktop what Yahoo has done here is put the results of browsing up top where they should be. And with the simple swipe of a finger a user can scroll through pages after page to see the site they are looking for.

If you take the best parts of Google Instant and the now defunct visual SearchMe bowser and put them together with some added features you get Yahoo’s Axis.

Available on iOS in an iPad and iPhone version as well as a Firefox extension, expect the browser to have broad cross-platform support. One definite plus is the browser makes it much easier to research. When you are ready to search in fact the top 40% of the iPad screen (the device I tested on) is devoted to suggested search terms, latest news and pictures of results pages.

The company has radically rethought the search/browser relationship.

One downside is the Firefox extension on a PC semi-lockup up my browser on install. After I killed the Firefox process tree all was well again. A simple reboot would have also done the trick. Once installed I noticed that all the coolness of the browser such as screen shots of results pages appeared along the bottom – with a search box.

The only downside is this effectively means that in certain instances you won't be able to access clickable areas at the bottom of the screen. I had to use F11 to get a full-screen browser in fact to allow the blogging software I use based on Moveable Type to work properly when adding pictures.

Is Yahoo now relevant again? I can’t answer the question but I am very impressed with this accomplishment and if it gains traction it could position the company very well as a mobile play – not to mention having even more influence in the browser market – beyond just a toolbar play. IBM had a near death experience and came back stronger than ever – ditto for Apple. If Yahoo does return to its former glory – and it is way way too early to even consider this a possibility, it will be a product like Axis which will be responsible.

It is worth pointing out that others think this browser is great as well. Check out what Jolie O’Dell has to say over at VentureBeat.

And now that Chrome has overtaken IE as the dominant browser, it is as good a time as any to add some serious competition into the mix.

See Yahoo Axis Search in Action

Yahoo Axis Swipe to See Other Results

Yahoo Axis Cool Start Screen

Yahoo Axis Lets You Share on Pinterest

Yahoo Axis Local Mode Protects Privacy to Some Degree

How Megaupload Takedown Hurts Cloud Computing

2012-01-22T19:07:24Z

How self-destructive US policies are hurting hiring and industry
One of the biggest concerns regarding the passage of SOPA is that entire domain names could be blocked by federal authorities due to a single offending blog or web page. In this past week, major websites such as Wikipedia and Google engaged in an education campaign in order to have consumers put pressure on politicians who eventually reversed course on their support of the bill.

On a side note – as a conservative – the fact that a Republican, Representative Lamar Smith was the biggest proponent of this bill is horrifying. He should be thrown out of office by his constituents at the first possible chance.

Moreover, any politician who ever supported the bill should suffer the same fate.

But what is even scarier than theoretical web takedowns is actual ones and this week we saw Megaupload removed from the web because it allegedly engaged in activities which promoted pirating copyrighted material. Now if you aren’t a user of the site – and I never have been to my knowledge, you may be led to believe the US government was in its rights to take down a site designed solely to break the law.

But the challenge here is there are many users who used Megaupload for legitimate uses like sharing and storing files. These people are effectively cut off from their assets – and were given no notice this would happen.

Here are tweets from some angry users:

@taenina: #Megaupload was closed by the FBI… Was I the only one who had it for work files? Just get me my files back!!!

@Pattysplayhouse: They shut down #Megaupload. I had backup files of all my personal images up there on that site

@Roatandude: So I had a whole bunch of personal stuff stored in #Megaupload and now its gone. WTF!!! #StopSOPA

@Nicole8angel: Megaupload is one thing that helps me send big files to my group mates when we’re making projects… Bring it back...

Think about this – Megaupload was being used as cloud storage and was shut down because the site engaged in practices the US government deemed to be illegal. Isn’t this the exact same argument outlined above as it relates to SOPA? Yes.

So what we have determined is the government doesn’t need SOPA to shut down websites it deems to be acting in a way which does not respect copyright holders.

But this is where it gets interesting. The insatiable move to the cloud has led to consumers and businesses storing more and more of their files on services from a variety of companies. Amazon’s S3 for example stores terabytes of information and it is a safe bet some of the data in its cloud is not legal – meaning pirated. So should Amazon S3 be shut down? And how about Amazon.com? After all it’s the same company. Likewise for other companies who allow illegal data to be shared. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, YouSendIt, you name it.

Obviously the issue is the degree of infringing data and moreover, what is the purpose of the service? For example, Napster was set up for no other reason but to share illegal music. Pretty clear cut and dry. But Megaupload has many legitimate users as well – so how does a determination get made in terms of the guilt, innocence and due process of such sites and services?

Well a good solution would be courts – but an argument can be made by the MPA that they take too long.

So we are left with what is really a grey area – it is unclear which sites will be future targets in-part because targets are determined by what users determine they want to share. So if millions of users tomorrow decide they want to use a specific cloud vendor for the purpose of setting up a new age Napster to share music and movies, the site could be targeted and taken down – along with the legitimate files stored on the service.

Explained another way, we are in legal cloud limbo. And it is worth stating firmly that the federal government is casting a shadow over cloud-computing – one of the hottest sectors of tech, receiving perhaps the most funding and doing the most hiring. I cannot think of anything more self-destructive for a society looking for economic growth to be doing.

11 Things Yahoo Must Do Now That Yang Has Stepped Down

2012-01-18T15:14:56Z

As reported on TMCnet yesterday, Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo has stepped down from the board to pursue other interests. We have a great deal to thank Yang for – as the first company to categorize the web and build out many free services, society has benefit greatly from what Yahoo has more or less given away for free. That is the positive – the negative is the company has eroded top management and investor confidence for many years. Not to mention the botched Microsoft acquisition some years back at a valuation more than double what the company is worth now. To summarize the challenges at Yahoo, its a giant sloth competing against gazelles like Google and Facebook.

The massive amount of innovation and competitive instincts shown by Google’s founders as well as Mark Zuckerberg is a start contrast to Yang who never struck me as a competitive businessperson. Now that he is gone altogether and new CEO Scott Thompson is at the helm, here are some of the areas of focus the company should be dealing with in no particular order.

Marketing

Yahoo has tremendous depth – a dizzying array of services, apps and products – in many cases, the press and people outside Yahoo working on the projects aren’t aware of them. The first step in turning around a company is improving communications and making your services more sticky. Obviously this can only be accomplished if users know all there is to explore and benefit from.

Social

Yahoo has increased its ties with Facebook – in fact I would say it has done a great job in this regard – but the company needs to reach out to the Twitter community as well – and how about Instagram – this up and coming mobile, social photo-sharing network would be a strong asset in a world where there is value associated with owning the social network.

Mobile

Continuing on the social theme and merging it with mobile is Yahoo’s IntoNow app which allows an iPhone or iPad to become an interactive, social TV terminal. You can login with Facebook and the program will listen to your TV, decipher what channel and program you are watching and share the information with your friends. From there you can communicate with your friends about the program.

This is an awesome app which needs to be promoted more widely. Moreover, Yahoo has to do more leading-edge work like this. Then it may be up to the press to start covering it more.

Cloud

Google and Amazon are generating real revenue from the cloud and there is an opportunity for SMB and enterprise dollars if the company can find new and creative ways to leverage its data center. There are many small businesses for example that use Yahoo Mail… What about new hosted apps to extend mail into CRM, accounting and other areas? This can be done with partners if need be.

Music

According to Alexa, music.yahoo.com gets 1.42% of the site’s traffic which isn’t bad – but what about a mobile app for music like Pandora? Does it make sense to pick up this company, Spotify or Slacke? How about a closer working relationship? Seems there is lots of opportunity here for growth.

Movies

This is a tougher one – the company’s movie site gets 2.3% of its total traffic – it could be better perhaps with more custom content. To that end the company announced they joined forces with Playtone and Reliance Entertainment to bring Tom Hanks' multi-dimensional animated series "Electric City" to Yahoo! in 2012.

This could be a big break for the company and with YouTube launching original content channels by the dozen this move must be done to remain somewhat competitive.

Be cool

Apple, Google and Twitter are cool – Yahoo to me seems very corporate. The company has to loosen up its culture and its way of doing business. One of its biggest challenges is the hipsters and even younger generations aren’t using email which means Yahoo has to find new ways of remaining relevant with this crowd. If the image of the company isn’t right to begin with, any new services will have a lower take-up rate.

Expand

Google comes out with so many new services so quickly it makes the head spin. Yahoo is much slower in this area and needs to speed up. They need to take a group of top engineers and set them free to discover the next big thing(s).

Partner

I’ve mentioned a few partnership opportunities above but there needs to be many more. Partnering is an inexpensive way to grow your business while helping another company grow theirs.

Behavioral Targeting

Why isn’t Yahoo the best at returning ROI for advertisers? It should be as it has just so much information about its users. Years back I wrote about how Google’s purchase of DoubleClick would put the search leader in a better position in terms of analytics but I never imagined Yahoo wouldn’t be a powerhouse in this area. The company needs to improve and quickly.

Election

Yahoo needs election tie-ins and as many as possible to stay relevant. By this I mean it needs to be involved in building the community of questions and answers for many of the televised debates. YouTube is doing this as is parent company Google. Likewise for Twitter and others – Yahoo has to do better.

These are just some things Yahoo can do to improve its performance and perhaps more importantly relevance. In Internet time, Yahoo at over 15 is a dinosaur. The question is with Yang’s departure and a new CEO can the company reinvent itself as an embryo or will it be bogged down in-part due to a stodgy corporate culture which took years to build and may take even longer to dismantle.

Less Than 2% of Yahoo Users Want to Share on Facebook?

2011-12-24T14:45:41Z

Yahoo introduced news sharing on Facebook three months ago and will now roll out sharing to 26 other parts of its site including its omg entertainment news, television, movies and games. According to the AP few people are opting to share their Yahoo! activities on Facebook. In fact the article relays that Yahoo has said 12 million out of 700 million have chosen to do so. And as you may have guessed, many of these users who are sharing are 18-24.

Yahoo!'s challenge is not only to grow traffic and ad revenue but how to deal with a younger population which rarely uses e-mail but instead has decided social and SMS are the best ways for them to communicate.

It would seem this partnership with Facebook is the win/win the company needs as both parties are able to get what they need. For Facebook they get more traffic and engagement on their platform while for Yahoo, anything which increases traffic and keeps the company relevant is good for their shareholders. This partnership makes you wonder if Facebook will soon buy some pieces of Yahoo. I believe picking up the whole package would not be a smart move but some choice portals the company runs may make sense as an exploratory move to evolve Facebook into more than a social site.

Google Currents Crashes Newsreader Party

2011-12-09T17:38:52Z

Flipboard calls itself the pocket-sized social magazine and this is an apt description for a social newsreader so popular that this week when it launched an iPhone edition, it was overwhelmed with traffic and crashed. Obviously there is tremendous interest in this category which explains why in April of this year the company raised $50M at a $200M valuation.

Another player in the space Yahoo! has Livestand, an app which has improved over the months but still has a somewhat non-intuitive user interface. And there is Zite… Acquired by CNN this past August, this app is more like Flipboard with a solid UI and available on the iPhone this week as well.

As with any emerging space, Google often throws its hat in. And thus, this week Google Currents was launched and it is a solid entry into a crowded space. The UI is slick and intuitive and it works fast and has a clean layout.

There is no revenue model yet but one can easily imagine ads being overlaid on the pages or proudly displayed atop articles.

Will Google wipe out the others in this category? Maybe but for now it is its second shot at the space. Remember Fast Flip which came out in September of 2009 and euthanized two years later?

I happened to like Fast Flip but never really used it that often. I am generally a Google Reader user and the simple interface allows the rapid absorption of hundreds if not thousands of headlines during a busy day. But as I recall, it wasn’t easy to see lots of news at once with Fast Flip.

But with Currents you can see about five stories per page depending on the source, photos on the page, etc. You could call it a Flipboard rip-off.

The activity in this market shows us how important it is for the tech industry to have control over the reader interface. In other words, there is a race to see who can own the news reading space the way Kindle owns it for books.

The difference of course is quite often, news is free, meaning an ad model needs to be successfully applied to these readers and that works best when you have scale.

Google has the major advantage here as it has the advertisers and the deep analytic behavioral analysis to know what ads work best with what content. Moreover they know everything about you as you login with your Google credentials.

All this means that the other companies in this space will have a major challenge keeping up with Google when it comes to extracting the most revenue per viewer.

Interestingly Yahoo! should be a strong player in this space as they too have tremendous analytical information on users but its execution hasn’t been adequate for much of this decade.

The question you have to wonder is when will some of these companies partner with Facebook to show ads based on Facebook profile information? This should result in more targeted offers.

My bet is on Flipboard founder Mike McCue – I’ve known him for over a decade as he also founded Tellme and successfully sold it to Microsoft a few years back. One would imagine that Microsoft would pick up Flipboard as well in the next few months or years and then work with Facebook on integration of its advertising system with Bing data thrown in for good measure.

One other point worth making is Flipboard is a great way for users to manage their social networking experience, meaning Facebook has got to at some point be concerned about losing the control over the “social experience” its users have.

All the more reason this company too may be interested in picking up Flipboard at some point soon. This as you may recall was the reason in-part Twitter purchased Tweetdeck for $40M this past May.

I’ll keep you posted as this plays out but for now I’m going back to my tablet for some more flipping.

Carol Bartz Fired From Yahoo! What's Needed Now

2011-09-07T12:35:42Z

Without ever meeting Carol Bartz, I realized pretty quickly that her hiring was a CEO gamble as her experience was not in line with what was needed at a media company. I outlined my thinking in January of 2009. When you have one of the most-visited websites in the world, you don’t hire someone with no web experience to run it. Yet, that is what the Yahoo! board did. It is stupefying and part of the reason I said it was time for Bartz to go this past June.

But even worse than the hiring of Bartz was the firing – she was let go on the phone which is understandable as she was traveling and the company didn’t want to deal with leaks. But what is unfathomable is that there is no replacement.

I suppose this is understandable as well because news of the CEO search would leak back to Bartz and if she wasn’t let go first this could cause even larger problems. But then again if they promoted from within then this wouldn’t be as big of an issue. Isn’t it amazing that with such a massive staff, there doesn’t seem to be an insider who the board believes can permanently run things? Talk about a shallow bench.

Yahoo! stock performance under Bartz (click to enlarge)

When people complain about the large amount of CEO pay they should realize that the stock appreciation-based wealth creation for employees and shareholders is directly tied to effective CEO performance. And the beneficiaries are often pension funds and 401K holders. And as we can see from Yahoo!’s stock performance, there hasn’t been positive change while Carol Bartz was at the helm.

Moreover, Yahoo! has hopefully learned that it competes with Google and they need a leader who can go toe to toe with the search giant on apps, mobile and in the numerous areas such as video where Google has left the company in the dust.

Bartz was tasked with increasing the stock price of the company and she hasn’t been too successful in this regard. Moreover, strained relations with Alibaba which many blame on Bartz didn’t help boost her longevity.

So now that she is out, CFO Tim Morse is acting CEO and a management team of vice presidents and the executive counsel are helping to run things.

What the company needs more than anything is someone with amazing vision and execution ability – a person who can rebuild the corporate culture of the company and get the whole organization excited about the future and make them competitive. The problem is I don’t recall Yahoo! ever being competitive so this is a tall order. And that is the sad part – one of the best assets in the world might not ever see its revenue maximized.

Marketing Goes Almost Painfully Local

2011-08-02T20:04:59Z

Pay attention, you might just overhear something

One of the most memorable business stories I hav e heard was when a consultant friend of mine flew to a large customer to quote on a substantial project. He was traveling with his business partner and happened upon a shuttle bus to the rental car company with his competitor and a partner. None of these consultants had ever met but my friend and his partner had the luck to keep quiet as he overheard the other two people on the shuttle bus finalizing their pitch and setting the price for the project. My friend priced his proposal under the competition and got the project. Now, that’s the sort of thing you want to overhear.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this story as I saw news item after news item fall into place for this month’s column. You see, just like on the shuttle bus, if you pay attention, you can pick up valuable insight into the future of the marketing, sales, CRM and customer interactions.

The art of the deal sites

Perhaps no other recent trend has shaken up the tech markets like the rise of daily deal sites like Groupon, a company whose growth rate at 2,241% caused the Wall Street Journal to call it the fastest growing company in the history of humanity.

Deal sites are here to stay and everyone; I mean everyone is jumping on the bandwagon from Google to Glenn Beck.

What this tells us is you have to be an absolute savant to keep track of all the marketing opportunities out there and in order to maximize ROI you should be ahead of these trends or you may find yourself playing catch up with the competition. Ask yourself if your management is the kind to forward you an angry email from Groupon wondering why your biggest competitor used their service first. Depending on your answer, you should act accordingly.

Amazon and Google weren’t local enough?

The buzz in the local space is beyond deafening. Even if you cover your ears you feel like the news will find a way through your nostrils to directly inject itself into your grey matter. Just yesterday in fact Amazon quietly launched its own deal site allowing customers who are already used to getting deals from the largest e-tailer to get more local oriented deals – likely from the brick and mortar establishments once relegated to using newspapers and such for their mass marketing needs.

Let’s be honest – if you don’t have human-supercomputers working for you, how on earth will you keep track of all the social/local deal sites and opportunities out there? A logical answer is with some sort of aggregator. Well, guess what – Google just picked up Dealmap, a startup providing users with access to data from hundreds of group-buying sites. You get the feeling there is a strong trend here?

Foursquare isn’t playing around

You think the news flow has stopped? Then you should know that social check-in site Foursquare which some equate to GPS-enabled Twitter is retooling its service to give merchants access to promoting themselves to the millions of users it has. By sharing location-based information with merchants it aims to allow these customers to increase engagement with customers to hopefully persuade them to frequent their stores and part with some of their hard-earned cash. As you may have guesses, they expect to monetize their service with paying merchants.

Mobility is the future and your channel marketing choices infinite

If you follow the trend lines and the investments you see the world of commerce is expanding to handle smarter and ubiquitous cell phones and brick and mortar shops once excluded from the tech revolution are now able to cash in on the latest technologies and channels to get a piece of the dotcom 2.0 dream. As always, not every player will be a winner and moreover, some deal sites will be better suited to some product and geographic areas and to specific types of customers. The challenge becomes how to market to and engage with and manage so many new potential customers, channels and do it on a budget which makes your CXOs happy.

I leave you with one thought it’s that you should pay attention to your own management and the rapidly-growing space of new marketing channels. You should be experimenting, analyzing and paying attention because even if your company is comfortable doing things the old way, sooner or later your management is bound to receive a deal offer from another company in your space causing them to second guess your marketing initiatives. And from my perspective this is not the sort of news you ever want to overhear.

Keep Bing at Microsoft

2011-07-26T17:17:12Z

From a competitive position, it would be major trouble to remove Bing from the deep pockets of Microsoft. Talk of the business being potentially sold to Facebook when that company needs to focus on fighting Google+ makes little sense. There are few other strong software companies beyond Oracle and Salesforce who I think could do a better job with Bing than Microsoft.

But like I said in May, Microsoft is doing as much as can be expected with Bing.

We know Marc Benioff loves Google so count them out of such a purchase - and Oracle, no fan of Microsoft or Google probably doesn't need the headache or the money-losing business as it is doing fine right now, thank you.

Microsoft has to continue to make Bing better while simultaneously forging stronger relationships with companies who are competing with Google. Facebook and Twitter are two obvious ones - perhaps LinkedIn is another company to work very closely with.

You see as long as Google is a dominant player in so many spaces, Microsoft can play the underdog position and work with all the companies they want. And US and EU regulators won't be able to say much about these deals.

This is more or less what Oracle did - it rolled up the CRM and other corporate software markets under the cover of competing with the Microsoft monopoly.

Metaswitch Thrutu iPhone App Lets Carriers Become Social Hubs

2011-07-20T15:00:00Z

Earlier this year I came across Thrutu from Metaswitch newtorks - an application development platform allowing carriers to leverage rich social features and provide them as services to customers. In short, this is the exact sort of solution wireless phone companies need to try to keep their customers engaged and more importantly paying them.

Of even greater importance for service providers is being able to ensure that the contact database doesn't continue to get moved from the carrier cloud to the social cloud. By that I mean, consumers are relying more and more on Facebook and Twitter as their contact database making the carrier and the phones they sell less important.

Thrutu brings social features such as location, contact and photo sharing as well as prodding via a remote vibration (like Facebook's poke) and more via an API which developers can use to do much more.

I saw a demo of it working on Android phones and was impressed and as of this moment the company has released an iPhone version as well. As you may have guessed, you will be better off using such a service on a network voice and data can be shared such as GSM or in an area where there is WiFi and 3G/cellular.

Of course the question you have to ask is whether it is too late for carriers to basically reinvent social networks which are already dominated by the web giants we all know (and many love). A positive sign for carriers is that Thrutu has been downloaded more that 250,000 times in the first four months of its release. Not too shabby. One imagines iPhone users are good for at least 250k-500k more downloads making the universe larger and the network effect even greater.

Nosh from Google a P2P Foursquare Meets Zagats

2011-07-19T23:14:17Z

I just met with Craig Walker the Founder & CEO of Firespotter Labs and he went over where his Google-backed companies will be innovating in the future. As you may recall, Walker founded Dialpad and Grandcentral which eventually got acquired by and became the foundation of Google Voice. Walker explained his new company will be looking to disrupt markets where there is an opportunity to disrupt.

We can for example expect more disruption in telephony and the hospitality market was referenced by him as a space worth $600 billion/year and yet there has been little innovation beyond the buzzing pagers they give you when there is a line to get a seat.

His company's new app, Nosh available on iOS and Android aims to merge the best of Foursquare and Zagat with the p2p elements of having reviews done by users who could be your friends. You can rate food at the restaurant where you eat and you can share the rating with others - the scale is 1 to 5 stars. He did a demo of the app for me which you can see in the video below.

Eventually when enough data is collected they will allow search functionality showing you what others think of the grilled octopus or seafood bisque at your favorite restaurant.

To me this is a great idea because so much of this information is already being shared on Facebook and Twitter but it is uncategorized meaning if someone finds a roach in local diner and tweets about it - how on earth will a potential customer know about it?

At some point in the future, this app can add other categories allowing it to rate doctors, retail stores or anything else.

If it catches on it will force restaurants and other establishments to have even better levels of quality as potential customers will be able to instantly find negative reviews and consider them before purchasing.

Google+ Becoming Serious Facebook Threat

2011-07-06T20:24:15Z

Microsoft was known for producing winning products after its third attempt - we may be saying something similar about Google soon

Google, a company known as the king of search - certainly has a mixed record when it comes to other spaces. Obviously they are doing a great job in the mapping space and their Android OS has turned into a real winner. But when it comes to social they have had flop after flop.

But now, after a week, the company seems to be doing amazingly well - with some sites reporting large amounts of traffic coming from the new social network. That and there are many sites who have more followers in a week on Google+ than they amassed on Google Buzz which is years old.

The bottom line - Facebook may have a real challenger - and more importantly, it shows us that even when you believe a company has a space locked up in tech, it may not be the case. The irony of it all is that AOL in many ways invented the social network and they have abandoned the space virtually entirely to pursue a local media strategy which many think is ill-advised. Yahoo! had the guts of a social network but could never pull it together. And then there is Myspace.

And Google - kept plugging along - similar to how Microsoft became successful on its third try, we may soon be saying something similar about Google as well.

More on Search Engine Land.

Photobucket Outage

2011-04-13T12:06:10Z

Updated 4/14/2011, 4/15/2011 and 4/19/2011 - see below.

Originally posted 4/13/2011

Apparently my Photobucket account is one of the ones unavailable due to maintenance. I have come to rely on this cloud-based photo sharing service more and more as it works on iOS and the Sony Dash. There is an Android app as well which I have found doesn't display photos as well as it does on other operating systems. Here is the message the company gives when I try to login via the web.

Update 4/14/2011: Its been more than 24 hours and the site is still out. This is without a doubt one of the challenges of moving to the cloud - but that doesn't mean as a customer of a free service I feel I have such a strong right to complain.

Jim Goss, the company's VP of Operations expressed his apologies (see below) for the site being inaccessible via the Sony Dash, the web and iOS - I've tried all three. The amazing news is I am among the 0.25% of the user base affected - according to Goss. Ideally customers would receive an email when the service is working again. I am getting fed up with relogging in unsuccessfully on my Sony Dash which seems to function primarily as an expensive electronic photo frame.

Update 04/15/11: It's been 48 hours and yes, you guessed it - my photos and videos are nowhere to be found but this nice message below from Jim Goss is quite like the spoonful of sugar which makes the medicine go down. The good news is this latest post could be lasting - and would fit regardless of how long my photos remain in limbo - and hopefully they aren't lost.

Update 4/19/2011: It has now been six days and still no photos - this message is what I see when I try to upload photos.

The Photobucket blog is littered with maintenance update notices starting April 12, 2011 and a hardware issues update from April 18 which says there should be a solution today or tomorrow - we'll see.

Bing For iPad: You Can Check Out But You Can Never Leave

2011-04-08T20:01:12Z

Bing for iPad Home Page

The iPad gained a very valuable information portal today in the form of a new application from Bing which has impressed me a great deal. What is different about this software is it borrows from other well-designed apps and isn't afraid to throw in its own improvements and graphically appealing glue to tie it all together.

When you enter the app you are presented with the Bing image of the day and underneath the graphic are widgets which give you information about the weather, news, maps, movies, trends and finance. Many of these areas update, making this program a truly functional portal.

Bing for iPad Movies

You also have access to other information presented when you click at the top right of the menu. Some of these are repeats of the bottom widgets but items like images, shopping and history are unique.

Bing for iPad Map of TMC HQ Building

I've always been a fan of the Bird's Eye view of Bing Maps and you can use your iPad to pinch and zoom your way around the map like you would a mouse on a PC. One limitation however is that Google Earth on the iPad allows you to rotate your map orientation with your two fingers on the map but Bing restricts you to having to press two buttons which allow you to rotate 90 degrees to the left or right.

The movies tab is interesting in that it takes an Amazon Windowshop approach to displaying titles. What I mean by this is you swipe your finger to the left or right to see movies with the accompanying graphics. It truly provides a superior movie search experience showing local theaters, previews and photos from the movie as well as excerpts of reviews.

Bing for iPad Search and News Swipe

The news portion of the application is impressive as well with an interface which is inviting and multi-layered meaning you can swipe left to get back to the previous screen. It is a little confusing as sometimes you can swipe back and forth to see prior screens and sometimes you can't. But overall, this is slick interface and something almost on par with the Wall Street Journal iPad app in terms of functionality but with a more slick GUI.

I was thrilled to see Tellme speech recognition built into the app as I have known the company well for over a decade but sadly, after trying to speak 10 different terms it wasn't able to understand a single thing I said clearly. This is where Google's incredible spell-check system gives it major edge.

Bing for iPad Trends

I've tried countless graphical news readers and a few which I like a lot are Flipboard and Zite but for whatever reason I keep reverting back to my simple Google Reader and my slew of XML feeds when scouring for the latest news. I do find when I have more time I tend to dabble with the more graphically rich programs.

The original premise of this piece is this app is like Hotel California - You can check out any time you want but you can never leave. And I do believe that is exactly what we are seeing here... An app which does so much in such a graphically pleasing fashion that users may have a tough time leaving. It isn't just the interface, it is the curated data coupled with the seamless interconnection between the pieces. A couple missing items are are social and email but for most other informational needs, I think the new Bing for iPad app hits the nail on the head.

Important HD Voice Research Report Available

2011-04-07T22:16:49Z

You probably know I have been a huge proponent of HD voice as to me it’s an inevitable outcome of transitioning away from the PSTN to IP-based networks which allow us to upgrade CODECs without having to downshift our conversations to technology which was invented many decades ago. When I was a kid, television was an 11 inch black-and-white screen which seemed to always have Walter Cronkite on it and changing the channels was a manual and rotary process.

Yet, the incredible tech advancements we have seen in the television space haven’t yet fully materialized in the world of telephony. Sure, I can have high-quality conversations if a call stays on IP networks and there is no need for transcoding or jumping onto the public switched telephone network. But for most calls we all make, this technology advancement is unheard – so the problem is solved but not in a way which really helps on most of our calls.

My thoughts and a panel of experts from ITEXPO East 2009 Miami on the future of HD voice

The good news is the opportunity to improve the quality of all phone calls will only grow over time as equipment is replaced, IP communications becomes more widely embraced and peering of VoIP networks becomes the norm, not the exception.

That’s why I am thrilled to announce that TMC – the company where I am CEO has partnered with HD Voice News to publish the first comprehensive report on the market and opportunity for HD voice technology and services.

I recently had a chance to look at the report and give the author, Doug Mohney my opinions. It was an impressive piece of work and Doug’s credentials in the market after being a contributing editor here at TMC for years, working at Fierce Markets and VON Magazine in the past make him the go to guy when writing such a report.

The one point I’d like to leave my readers with is why is it we spend so much more money on gear and services which support HD TV but when it comes to voice, we don’t do a good job educating or differentiating services – let alone charging more? The answer is there are still challenges such as HD voice interop and the dreaded PSTN. This report should hopefully help the key decision-makers at carriers, enterprises and equipment companies see where the challenges and opportunities lie in taking the communications market to the next level. Here is a press release discussing the report in more detail and a site where you can order the report.

11 Reasons Why Google Needs Retail Stores

2011-04-07T20:02:26Z

It is becoming clear the world is gravitating towards everything Apple sells and even worse for the competition is Cupertino is setting the tone for product launches, making the rest of the tech world play perpetual catch up. Even worse, Apple is buying up all available inventory on components forcing companies as big and mighty as RIM to push back the launch of their PlayBook tablet! Of course one of the most important parts of Apple’s success is the stores – those minimalist tech nirvanas attracting people of all ages to literally trip over one another as they touch and feel the latest gadgets and computers connected to huge flat-screens with the latest in audio equipment.

Here are the top 11 reasons why Google needs a strong retail strategy ASAP.

To compete more effectively with Apple and most recently Microsoft who is still wavering on whether a store strategy makes sense.
To showcase Android smartphones: Sure, you can go to Verizon or the AT&T stores to see Android devices but Apple has shown us that owning the experience is important and moreover the halo effect of selling other products to a captive audience is working amazingly well for the company which made the white headphone cord popular. Now that Android is on fire, the company should leverage its success to sell other current and future consumer electronics products.
To showcase Android tablets: At the moment, the iPad is crushing the competition without any one company making a serious dent in Apple’s early success. Hey even Consumers Reports’ the group which had negative things to say about the iPhone 4 likes the iPad 2. “So far, Apple is leading the tablet market in both quality and price, which is unusual for a company whose products are usually premium priced," said Paul Reynolds, Electronics Editor at Consumer Reports. Most people including me expect Android tablets to begin to take share but to date we aren’t seeing anything worth writing home about. Perhaps the Sony tablet based on Android expected later this year is something worth bragging about and showcasing.
To showcase Android-powered TVs: A great way to convince consumers they need an Android-powered television is to show them in action searching, interconnecting with YouTube and other leading-edge things that wow an audience.
To showcase Google TV: The Logitech Revue needs all the help it can get as Google has had issues with content providers disabling the free viewing of their programs over this and other Google TV-powered devices.
To Showcase YouTube: Google is launching new channels on YouTube and spending $100M in the process on content. Seems like this is something worth showing off, right?
To showcase printers which support Google Cloud Print: Yesterday TMCnet learned HP printers will support Google Cloud Print out of the box – what better place to show it in action than in a store?
To showcase GPS devices which support Google Maps and Earth: For heaven sakes, the company has people riding around in tricycles and snowmobiles so it can make its GPS and mapping systems better than others. Wouldn’t it make sense to highlight these efforts and even show a video interviewing Sven – the loyal tricycler who logged 50 miles a week so you could sit on the couch and experience Sweden vicariously?
To showcase Chrome: Yesterday I read on InfoTech Spotlight that Google’s Chrome 10 has hardware acceleration as well as a 66% increase in JavaScript performance. This is significant and there could be demos of graphic-intensive web pages wowing mall shoppers near you.
To showcase the company’s laptop offerings: One day soon Google’s laptop offering will become reality and a logical place to sell such a device is a store – similar to the way Apple sells its laptops and desktops.
To get people using NFC and Google Checkout: It’s no surprise the search leader wants to be a payment leader and even though Checkout seems to be a flop – with NFC on tap for future versions of Android – coupled with Checkout, perhaps the company can gain traction in the mobile payment/online payment space.

Bonus: To showcase the products Google sells online like YouTube shirts and Google branded hacky sacks and tote bags.

What does Google say about all this? Nothing so far – I reached out via email and the company wasn’t immediately available to give a response via email or phone but it seems the opportunity is there for the company built primarily on keyword based online advertising to use its tremendous name recognition to drive crowds into stores. If they can get the presentation and execution correct, they could benefit tremendously from such an endeavor.